Can I Use Zoom Breakout Rooms while Live Streaming with Swivl Robot?

Breakout rooms are a Zoom feature that allow the host to put meeting attendees into smaller groups for discussion during a Zoom meeting. If you want to use this functionality with your Swivl robot, here is what you need to do. NOTE: It is only possible to use the breakout rooms function when you are in the Integrated Audio setup, or you are a host of your Zoom meeting on a desktop computer. This is because Zoom currently does not support managing breakout rooms from mobile devices.

Robot Setup

Make sure that you have your Integrated Audio configuration set up and ready to go, and that your Zoom meeting has been started. See more details on Integrated Audio setup in this article. 

In Your Zoom Meeting (with Integrated Audio setup)

1. Once you are in your Zoom meeting and you want to use breakout rooms, click on the Breakout Rooms button on the bottom of your screen. You must do this from the teacher computer, not your mobile device.

2. You can choose to assign participants to breakout rooms, or you can assign them randomly. If you assign them randomly, your Swivl video participant will be automatically assigned to one of the rooms. 

VERY IMPORTANT: There will be NO audio coming from the Swivl participant. This is because your teacher PC/laptop is using the Swivl Audio Interface and the marker as its microphone source, and you have canceled audio on your robot's mobile device. This means that if your Swivl participant is in one breakout room and your teacher computer is in another, and you have not disabled video on the mobile device, participants in the room with the Swivl video will be able to see you but not hear you, until you join that room with your teacher computer.

**For this reason, we suggest not entering a breakout room from the Swivl mobile device. If you do, we suggest turning off the video on the mobile device to avoid confusion when your Swivl video enters one of the rooms. You can also have your Swivl participant leave the room as soon as they enter and stay in the main meeting.**

           

3. Once your participants are in the breakout rooms, you can join and leave individual rooms from the host computer. You may want to enable video on your teacher computer at this point. Your marker will still be collecting audio, and the teacher computer hosting the Zoom meeting will be where the audio comes from for remote participants.

You will be able to share your screen with participants in each individual breakout room.

When you are finished, click the Breakout Rooms button on your teacher computer's screen again. Then click close all rooms to have your participants return to the main meeting.

Note: When you are using breakout rooms in a hybrid learning situation, with some students at home and some in the classroom, your in-person students will see whatever is displayed on the host computer, whether that is a breakout room or the empty main meeting.